The way to buy cheap.

And above the frame, in marker on the concrete wall, he had written the three words that saved his company:

Kenji was a ghost in the machine. A brilliant mechanical engineer who could make a gear sing and a camshaft dance, he worked not for a conglomerate, but out of a converted bicycle shed in Setagaya. His startup, "Nezumi Kinetics," had one dream: to build a low-cost prosthetic knee joint that could change lives in developing nations.

His current license had expired the previous midnight. The splash screen now glared at him like a judgmental sensei: License Error. Contact your administrator.

There was only one problem. The tool he needed—SolidWorks—cost more than his entire prototyping budget.

The price appeared: